Tens of thousands at major demonstrations against the right – including Scholz and Baerbock
Published: Sunday, Jan 14th 2024, 21:40
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A few days after the announcement of a networking meeting of radical right-wingers, tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Berlin, Potsdam and other cities on Sunday to demonstrate against the right. According to police and organizers, 25,000 gathered at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin alone. Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens), who both have their election campaign in Postdam, took part in the Brandenburg state capital. According to the initiator, Lord Mayor Mike Schubert, 10,000 participants gathered there.
"I am standing here as one of thousands of Potsdam residents who are standing up for democracy and against old and new fascism," Baerbock told the German Press Agency. She and the Chancellor wore burgundy scarves with the inscription "Potsdam shows its colors".
Thousands elsewhere too
People also took to the streets in other places. According to the police, around 7,000 people protested against the AfD and right-wing extremism in Kiel, while the organizers spoke of 8,000. In Saarbrücken, there were around 5,000 according to the police. In other cities, there were several hundred in some cases.
On Wednesday, the media outlet Correctiv published research findings on the meeting in a Potsdam villa. Individual AfD functionaries as well as individual members of the CDU and the arch-conservative Werteunion (Union of Values) also took part in the meeting in November. The former head of the far-right Identitarian movement in Austria, Martin Sellner, confirmed to Deutsche Presse-Agentur that he had spoken there about "remigration". When right-wing extremists use the term, they usually mean that a large number of people of foreign origin should leave the country - even under duress. According to Correctiv's research, Sellner named three target groups: Asylum seekers, foreigners with the right to stay - and "non-assimilated citizens".
Wüst: "AfD is a dangerous Nazi party"
North Rhine-Westphalia's Minister President Hendrik Wüst (CDU) told the "Tagesspiegel am Sonntag" that the meeting in Potsdam with individual AfD officials had shown that the second largest opposition party in the Bundestag was not a protest party. He made it clear, as he did a few months ago: "The AfD is a dangerous Nazi party."
CDU party leader Friedrich Merz said after a board meeting in Heidelberg on Saturday with a view to the upcoming elections, including in three eastern German states: "We will go into these elections with a very clear, very tough stance, especially against the AfD."
Green Party leader Omid Nouripour called for consequences: "If people meet to plan a coup or the deportation of millions of people, then they must be prosecuted under criminal law," he told Die Welt, "with the full force of the law". The task of all democrats is to clearly name the AfD as an "enemy of our democracy, our economy, our society".
Debate on AfD ban
After the meeting, the debate about a possible ban on the AfD flared up again. However, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier is skeptical about such an application. "I cannot judge the chances of success - proceedings would probably take a very long time," Steinmeier told the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper (Saturday). The former President of the Federal Constitutional Court, Hans-Jürgen Papier, told the "Tagesspiegel" (Saturday) about a possible ban: "That would only play into the hands of the AfD." The Basic Law sets high hurdles for a party ban in Article 21.
FDP leader Christian Lindner made a similar argument at an event organized by his party in Düsseldorf on Sunday: the AfD does not draw a line between itself and right-wing extremists - but there would be no greater triumph for them than if the democratic parties knew no other way. CDU leader Merz also said that he thought little of a ban.
In Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia, the AfD is classified as a confirmed right-wing extremist party by the respective Office for the Protection of the Constitution; nationwide, it is considered a suspected case. The party has been riding high in the polls for months. State elections are due to be held in Brandenburg, Thuringia and Saxony in September. In all three states, the AfD is currently ahead in the polls, in some cases significantly.
Wüst wants to talk to the Chancellor about migration
In light of this, Wüst called on the German government to work together to limit migration. "The power of populists and extremists is always fed by the inability of democrats to act. This is especially true when it comes to one of the major problems of our time: the migration issue," Wüst told the "Tagesspiegel am Sonntag" newspaper. Wüst called for an early meeting between Chancellor Scholz and the state premiers on the subject.
SPD General Secretary Kevin Kühnert rejected this. "I consider NRW Minister President Wüst's demand to be tactless, especially these days," Kühnert told the newspaper. "Against the backdrop of recently uncovered subversion and deportation plans in circles of AfD functionaries, entrepreneurs and right-wing extremist activists, there is no need to make concessions to the increasingly radical AfD."
©Keystone/SDA
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